One type of argument for the justification of protest activities has appealed to pragmatic considerations.1 Guided by the principle ‘the means should prefigure the end,’ defenders of what I call ‘the success condition for protests’ have argued that protests—and particular forms of it—are permissible only by virtue of their success2 in bringing forth practical results in line with their movement’s objectives, be it social change or enhanced cooperation.3 The condition holds that morally justified protests have a good enough chance of successfully achieving its ends, thus rendering the risks they impose, all other things equal, morally acceptable.
Since certain forms of resistance should be undertaken if and only if they are considered successful in achieving their desired set of objectives, in converse, protest activities that are considered ineffective or counterproductive to the movement on the whole should not be pursued at all.4 On this note, some have even argued that all protests are pointless.5
In this article, I will examine this success condition and ask whether particular forms of protests—for instance, those that are violent, covert, evasive, or offensive, and perhaps “counterproductive”—should be reconsidered, if not avoided simpliciter.6
Effective Nonviolence
This question concerning effectiveness lies at the heart of “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict” by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan—two political scientists who aspire to figure out whether campaigns of nonviolent resistance are more effective drivers of change than their violent counterparts.7 “Our study therefore concludes that nonviolent civil resistance works, both in terms of achieving campaigns’ strategic objectives and in terms of promoting the long-term well-being of the societies in which the campaigns have been waged,” they write. “Violent insurgency, on the other hand, has a dismal record on both counts.”
Chenoweth and Stephan present a number of statistical findings from the research and analysis of 323 campaigns, both violent and nonviolent, which occurred around the world between 1900 and 2006. After analyzing nearly 160 variables related to success criteria—number of participants, international sanctions, backfiring and loyalty shifts, etc.—they found that nonviolent action has a success rate of 57 percent (cf. 25 percent by violence), and a failure rate of only 20 percent (whereas violence fails over 60 percent of the time).8 To be coded a “success” the campaign must have met its stated objective within a reasonable period of time (two years), and have had a discernible impact on the outcome. If the campaign did not meet its objectives or did not obtain significant concessions, the campaign was coded a “failure.”
Strategic nonviolent action, Chenoweth and Stephan claims, at times enhanced the campaign’s domestic and international legitimacy, attracting more broad-based participation and sympathy.9 The involvement of greater numbers of participants in resistance campaigns led to a number of factors that positively contributed to a movement’s success in creating desired change, including the appearance of openness to negotiation and bargaining, a larger social network, and allegiance shifts within security forces. Building off of this work, other researchers have found that impact of public opinion on changing policy is substantial: the mobilization of sympathetic bystanders to perceive the status quo as illegitimate successfully instigated social change processes.10
Although Chenoweth and Stephan both acknowledge that “there is no blueprint for success,” tactical considerations of effectiveness bear significant weight on whether violent or nonviolent actions should be undertaken.11 By no means do the authors call for a blanket of nonviolence, or nothing but nonviolence. But all things considered, since nonviolent civil resistance is more successful in securing its desired political aims, Chenoweth and Stephan suggest that nonviolent forms of resistance should be preferred, given the circumstances, strategically, over less effective and possibly counterproductive, violent forms of resistance.12
Murky Metrics
While an excellent, well-researched book, Chenoweth and Stephan acknowledge that it is difficult to categorize campaigns in the binary designation of “violent” or “nonviolent” given that many strategic campaigns have elements from both approaches. Some of the civil resistance movements that they classify as nonviolent—for instance, the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the First Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli occupation—often in fact involved violent flanks. In their criteria, a movement is violent if it rests primarily on armed insurrection. “Characterizing a campaign as violent or nonviolent simplifies a complex constellation of resistance methods,” they write.13
It is difficult to fully explore the implications of each of the 160 variables on social change despite efforts of operationalisation. Provided the large number of moving variables, including the shifting global landscape of dissent and authoritarian adaptations, causation is difficult to establish through empirical observation. After revisiting her study in 2017, Chenoweth notes that the success rates of nonviolent campaigns have declined by a staggering rate since 2010.14
The project of detailing all the relevant, collectively exhaustive outcome-mechanisms is itself a task that is very hard, if not impossible.15 In the social sciences literature at large, how to measure the effectiveness of protests and social movements is unclear, especially provided that all protesters’ notions of “perceived effectiveness” are not the same.16 To add, public attitudes and perceptions of a protest’s success may radically change as time passes.17 The question regarding the nature of “success,” and the identification of all the important influences and dynamics which factor into this buzzword, remain fuzzy at best.
Chenoweth herself admits that even when civil resistance campaigns “fail” on her criteria in the short run, they have often led to longer-term reforms and changes that brought about democratization compared with violent campaigns. Even if the metric of effectiveness were straightforward, there are many more factors to account for than merely “effectiveness” when deciding what forms of protests to engage in.
Beyond Effectiveness
In a short interview with the Oxford Political Review, Candice Delmas shared her thoughts on what considerations, possibly, lies beyond the effectiveness criterion. “There is need to question our ubiquitous and perennial calls for civility and nonviolence, which have been predicated on the idea that anything else is counterproductive,” she said.
In her most recent book, “A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil,” Delmas challenges Chenoweth and Stephan, arguing that the empirical argument for the superior effectiveness of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience in the context of large social movements does not at face value establish the ineffectiveness or counterproductivity of uncivil forms of disobedience. In some cases, Delmas argues that recent protests in Hong Kong have been popular and remarkably effective due to tactics of uncivil disobedience.18 In other cases, violent groups often work to strengthen the bargaining position of their nonviolent counterparts while protecting more moderate nonviolent activists from repression (a concept known as the “positive radical flank effect”).20
Delmas takes a further step. “More generally, effectiveness may not be measured solely in terms of contribution to a mass civil resistance campaign,” she writes. “Individual actions may be socially beneficial (“effective”) whether or not they lead to reform.” For example, the Lavender Panthers’ organized use of self-defensive violence to fight violence in San Francisco in the 1970s can be justified, for it can directly frustrate injustice and benefit people in dire need through ways that are not available to nonviolent, civil disobedients.21 Uncivil protests can be just as “effective” in other ways besides contributing to the objects of select social movements. Incivility draws attention to injustice.
Apt Anger
Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that a movement’s (uncivil) tactics are strategically ineffective, there may nonetheless be intrinsic, non-instrumental reasons to engage in those sorts of protests. Uncivil disobedience, however prudentially irrational or counterproductive, might still be the best way for the activist to express one’s well-grounded disrespect and even contempt for a broken, unjust society that does not care about one’s life, well-being, and equal standing. There is intrinsic worth, immeasurable by social scientific tools, that comes with expressing and affirming one’s agency and dignity in the face of threats and denial thereof.
In “The Aptness of Anger,” Amia Srinivasan develops an account of “affective injustice,” that is, when victims of injustice must withhold expressing their apt feelings and emotions because of other prudential considerations (i.e. outcomes and effectiveness).22 Alas, forcing agents to shut up adds an affective injustice that compounds the initial arms of oppression.
“The counterproductivity of one’s anger is often seen as dispositive reason not to get angry, whatever the circumstances,” Srinivasan writes. A long thread of literature dating back from Seneca to Martha Nussbaum pits anger against sanity and civility.23 The opposing twin of the counterproductivity critique, long rooted in the tradition of Black and feminist political thought, in contrast, challenges the empirical presupposition that ‘anger is at best a weapon for self-harm.’ Srinivasan quotes the powerful words of Audrey Lorde, “anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification.” Getting angry is a means of affectively “appreciating” and “marking” the injustice in the world.24
Hence, the metrics of effectiveness and aptness can be pulled apart. There is more to the justification of anger and uncivil protests than its mere effects. Anger, however unproductive, might still be a fitting emotional response to the unjust world as it is. By condemning anger, Srinivasan concludes, “we neglect, as we have always neglected, those who were never allowed to be angry, the slaves and women who have the power of neither the state nor the sword.”25
Marching Forward
The success condition for protests places a constraint on every protester’s actions. Provided empirical backing, this qualifier could limit the realm of justifiable protests to only peaceful, public, nonviolent, respectful, and civil forms of resistance. On the other hand, by solely relying on this bendable, oft-oversimplified threshold of effectiveness, we fail to adequately capture the complexity of movements, the diverse standpoints of victims and activists, and the apt affective states involved.
Perhaps this calls for more interdisciplinary work to bridge empirical and non-empirical work on political protests and forms of civil and uncivil disobedience. For, when interviewed about the role of analytical political philosophy in face of the social sciences, Delmas explained, “its role is to contest the common sense in society and in scholarship, changing the outlook and what to look for, how to understand success and failure, violence and nonviolence, and so forth.” She added, with a laugh: “the empirical question is not our job?”
1. Andrew Sabl, “Looking Forward to Justice: Rawlsian Civil Disobedience and its Non-Rawlsian Lessons.” The Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 3, 2001, pp. 307-330; Jackson Diehl, “2019’s mass protests are missing the spectacular results of 2011 and 1989.” The Washington Post, 2019. <www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/2019s-mass-protests-are-missing-the-spectacular-results-of-2011-and-1989/2019/12/08/731fbee0-1775-11ea-8406-df3c54b3253e_story.html>
2. Greg Satell and Srdja Popovic, “How Protests Become Successful Social Movements.” Harvard Business Review, 2017. <hbr.org/2017/01/how-protests-become-successful-social-movements>.
3. Jesse Singal, “5 Important Insights About Successful Protest Movements.” The Cut, 2017. <www.thecut.com/2017/03/5-important-insights-about-successful-protest-movements.html>; Srdja Popovic, “Protests and Principles” The Wilson Quarterly, 2020. <www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/the-power-of-protest/protests-and-principles/>.
4. Moises Naim, “Why Street Protests Don’t Work.” The Atlantic, 2014. <www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/why-street-protests-dont-work/360264/>; Brent Simpson, Robb Willer, and Matthew Feinberg, “Does Violent Protest Backfire? Testing a Theory of Public Reactions to Activist Violence” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 2018.
5. Nathan Heller, “Is There Any Point to Protesting?” The New Yorker, 2017. <www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/is-there-any-point-to-protesting>.
6. Ten-Herng Lai, “Book Review: Candice Delmas. A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.” Ethics, 2019.
7. Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.” Columbia University Press, 2012.
8. Michelle Nicholasen, “Nonviolent Resistance Proves Potent Weapon.” The Harvard Gazette, 2019. <news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/>.
9. David Robson, “The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world.” BBC Future, 2019. <www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world>.
10. Emma F. Thomas and Winnifred R. Louis, “When Will Collective Action Be Effective? Violent and Non-Violent Protests Differentially Influence Perceptions of Legitimacy and Efficacy Among Sympathizers.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2013; Matthew Feinberg, Robb Willer, and Chloe Kovacheff. “Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements.” Rotman School of Management Working Paper No. 2911177, 2017; Olga Khazan, “The Psychology of Effective Protest.” The Atlantic, 2017. <www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/the-psychology-of-effective-protest/517749/>.
11. Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict.” International Security, vol. 33, no. 1, 2008, pp. 7–44. <www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/IS3301_pp007-044_Stephan_Chenoweth.pdf>.
12. Erica Chenoweth, “The success of nonviolent civil resistance.” TedXBoulder, 2013. <youtu.be/YJSehRlU34w>.
13. Chenoweth and Stephan, 2008.
14. Erica Chenoweth, “Trends in Nonviolent Resistance and State Response: Is Violence Towards Civilian-based Movements on the Rise?” Global Responsibility to Protect, 2017, pp. 86-100.
15. Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, “People protest for many reasons, yet we don’t know how effective protests are.” British Politics and Policy, 2015. <blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/how-effective-are-protests/>.
16. Matthew J. Hornsey, et al., “Why Do People Engage in Collective Action? Revisiting the Role of Perceived Effectiveness.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2006, vol. 36, no. 7, pp. 1701–1722.
17. Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, “Going Too Far: The American Public’s Attitudes toward Protest Movements.” Cornell University. <ropercenter.cornell.edu/going-too-far-american-publics-attitudes-toward-protest-movements>; Frank Newport, “Martin Luther King Jr.: Revered More After Death Than Before.” Gallup News Service, 2006. <news.gallup.com/poll/20920/martin-luther-king-jr-revered-more-after-death-than-before.aspx>.
18. Candice Delmas, “A Duty to Resist When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil.” Oxford University Press, 2018.
19. Candice Delmas, “Uncivil Disobedience in Hong Kong.” Boston Review, 2020. <bostonreview.net/global-justice/candice-delmas-uncivil-disobedience-hong-kong>.
20. Ten-Herng Lai, “Justifying Uncivil Disobedience.” Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, vol. 5, 2019.
21. Eric Markowitz, “The Most Dangerous Gay Man in America Fought Violence With Violence.” Newsweek, 2018. <www.newsweek.com/2018/02/02/most-dangerous-gay-man-america-789402.html>.
22. Amia Srinivasan, “The Aptness of Anger.” The Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 26, no. 2, 2018, pp.123-144.
23. Amia Srinivasan, “Would Politics Be Better Off Without Anger?” The Nation, 2016. <www.thenation.com/article/archive/a-righteous-fury/>.
24. Brian Wong, “Interview with Professor Amia Srinivasan.” Oxford Political Review, 2020. <oxfordpoliticalreview.com/2020/01/07/interview-with-professor-amia-srinivasan/>.
25. Srinivasan, 2018, p. 143.
Woojin Lim